Creative Destruction; It’s Kind Of A Big Deal

My latest post for Alpha Baskets looks at creative destruction as relates to the widespread closing of retail outlets and what the long term implications might be.

From the post;

As a bigger concept this is about creative destruction, a concept widely attributed to Joseph Schumpeter from the 1950’s. Creative destruction is what makes laptops and 60 inch televisions be dirt cheap (Moore’s Law is a derivative of creative destruction) and the list of industries that have been impacted is endless. People as consumers have mostly benefitted although it might be a different story for people as workers. Think about auto manufacturing which along with other forms of manufacturing are moving more to robotics and automation. We’ve all seen the posts on Facebook about fast food workers being replaced by kiosks as the minimum wage starts to move a lot higher.

The other day I mentioned wanting to learn about the economics of the off road racing that I’ve been taking pictures of. This is typical of the setup that many of the racing teams have creating a massive work area with equipment being packed away in the semi when they roll out. The prize money seems to be fairly small in relation to this sort of scope so maybe this is more about marketing for the big teams and a fun (and expensive) hobby for the smaller teams. I’m not sure yet.